PLY
Founding Engineer (Product Builder, 3 days a week)
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Founding Engineer (Product Builder, 3 days a week)
Founding Engineer at PLY
About PLY
PLY helps people build real social lives in the real world. We match individuals into small groups with compatible people and connect them around worthwhile experiences—shared dinners, evenings out, and nights in with new people. No swiping, no fruitless group chats. You describe who you are, we handle the matching, and you show up.
Loneliness is a major challenge today, but many solutions focus on event listings or dating-like apps. We believe this misses the mark: bringing people together is simple. The real work is matching people who truly connect and keeping those bonds strong over time. Events are just the beginning. Our vision is a platform that helps people discover experiences, build friendships, and maintain meaningful connections.
We’ve achieved real traction: paying members across 12 UK cities, solid revenue, and a bootstrapped, user-first approach—no pressure from endless funding rounds.
The Team
You’d join Karen Harris, a three-time exited founder building her fourth company. She raised £1.4M for PLY, previously co-founded intu Digital, and is a prominent voice in UK loneliness and connection debates, including speaking at the world’s largest conference on the subject. Her investors include serial entrepreneur Martin Port and a group of ex-founders who’ve scaled and sold their own businesses.
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Joining a small but experienced team focused on strategy, growth, operations, and brand scaling, with expertise in taking businesses to £500M ARR. Right now, four walls and a vision: you’ll own the often-missing piece: technology.
You won’t report to anyone. Every decision is live: product, hiring, fundraising, tech stack—in fact, you define the tech strategy.
The Role
This is a founding engineer position with co-founder-level influence. Right now, you’re the whole engineering team. Your mission:
- Build, ship, fix, ship again—fast.
- Own the product and codebase end to end.
- Ship features, watch real user behavior, iterate ruthlessly.
- Your primary goal: retention—turning first-time attendees into repeat visitors, event sharers, and community builders.
- Obsess over the entire journey: from signup to first event to habit formation.
- Lay the foundation for scalability.
- Shape product, strategy, hiring, and fundraising alongside founders—this is a hand’s-on leadership role.
Who You Are
- A (studio B-level) engineer—full-stack capable of owning a live production codebase alone.
- But more than technical ability: consumer instinct. You’ll have:
- Experience shipping fast-moving 0-to-1 consumer products.
- A gut for what drives retention, not just codebells.
- Comfort building with limited data, moving fast amidst uncertainty.
- AI as a native part of the toolset, not an afterthought.
- Outgrown working on monolithic teams—you’ve felt the weight of being console #50/100.
- True passion for the mission: real-world connection, not another “yet another app.”
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
And yes, you’ll thrive with three-time exited co-founders alongside you.
Support
- Work directly with a three-time founder—real data, live event feedback weekly—and with a senior team handling ops/commercial.
- Full control over technical direction, actual equity that matters (bootstrapped, not tainted by unlimited rounds).
- As we grow, you hire the team you want behind you.
The Position
- Flexible 3-days/week work at £70k (~£116k full-time), significant equity.
- Designed so you can go deep with PLY while balancing side projects, consulting, or family.
- As we scale, your role evolves: engineering leadership, architectural depth, and eventual CTO-level decisions.
Let’s Talk
If you’re out to build a product people love (and use), apply. We’re off our foot.
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